Theological college gets a new name and new direction

ST JOHN’S Theological College in Nottingham has changed its name to ‘ St John’s School of Mission’ following a radical rethink in ethos.

Principal David Hilborn, pictured, and chair of St John’s Council, Chris Smith, said that ‘the world is changing fast, and we have to change too.’

The directors said they have ‘faced a radical challenge’ to reshape ministerial training, and are ready to enter a ‘new era’ focussed on missional imperatives.

“We need to find a new way to train new leaders for the church of the future,” their statement reads.

Speaking to The Church of England Newspaper, Dr Hilborn said the background to the new approach lies in the Resourcing Ministerial Education Report, with a key emphasis to increase vocations by 50 per cent over the next five years, with the emphasis on young vocations.

In the new model, a third of the curriculum will be delivered to youth ministry students training alongside ordinands in a system of ‘mutual influence’.

Students in the new system will work with ‘mission-focussed’ mentors and there will be an increased level of collaboration with Midlands Institute for Children Youth and Mission.

Mentorship and practice, a form of teaching commonly reserved for curacy, will feature highly throughout the whole of a student’s training, to resist a frontloading model where colleges impart an intense block of theological information on students before they move to practice at curate level.

“That model ought to happen from the get go in ordination training,” Dr Hilborn told us.

The statement says that the church needs a radically reshaped ministry for the future: “We need missional leaders — ordained and lay.

“We need evangelists, youth ministers and children’s work specialists. We need risk-takers and ground-breakers. We need people who might never have thought of themselves as missional leaders, but are prepared to answer the call of God.”

Dr Hilborn said that in its move to focus on ‘pioneering enterprising missional leaders’ there is a place in the wider missional imperative for more experimental congregations that ‘push the envelope’.

“That’s really important but the model in the Church of England is a healthy one. Models such as Fresh Expressions get oversight from the wider community but in turn reform the life of traditional parish congregations.

“Experiments that are not relationally linked to the mainline church can go off on a tangent to the extent that they become autonomous without accountability.”

He said that St John’s School of Mission understands the importance of worship in being an expression of people’s discipleship and that worship needs to be related to mission.

“The context of the church is equally important to the context of people’s normal lives: the two need to be in dialogue and reciprocally related.

“If you have an understanding in the role of church in discerning what God’s doing in the world then you will understand that worship has to reflect your calling to transform hearts and minds.”

He added: “A significant barrier is the church not thinking missionally, thinking how it can be changed by the gospel.”